The mystery behind Nintendo’s new 18-rated game has been revealed and will be released next month with no sign of Bloober Team involvement.
It’s still surprising how good June’s Nintendo Direct was with so many brand new games no one knew about, but it turns out there was one more title Nintendo could have mentioned in the form of Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective. Club.
The 18-rated game was first teased last week with some very creepy images of a man with a paper bag over his head and a crudely drawn smiley face.
At the time, there was no indication of what it was, but recent rumors suggested that it was part of the Famicom Detective Club series, and this has now been confirmed by Nintendo.
The original two Famicom Detective Club games on the NES (Famicom being the Japanese name for Nintendo’s first console) were originally only available in Japan, but full remakes were released worldwide in 2021.
The first two games are essentially visual novels, with the remakes featuring only very limited animation and mostly still images. However, they deliberately stuck to the originals, without the English voices, so it remains to be seen if the new game will have a more modern style.
The initial trailer images were pre-rendered (or maybe live action, hard to tell), but everything so far indicates that the game will still feature the same hand-drawn artwork as before.
The 2021 remake was rated 16 in the UK, but Emio is already rated 18, meaning an even more violent and possibly gory game than before.
The basis of the plot seems to revolve around a serial killer who seeks out crying young girls and kills them, placing a paper bag with a smiley face on it over their head.
Australia’s age rating information previously stated that the game contained “strong themes, violence and references to suicide”, as well as “themes of violence, cruelty, domestic violence and suicide”. Which is a tough thing to do for a game made by Nintendo.
Producer Yoshio Sakamoto doesn’t offer any real details in the video above, but does mention that he sees the game as the “culmination” of the series and that many will find the ending “divisive,” which sounds ominous.
Early rumors suggested that Polish studio Bloober Team, who are currently working on a remake of Silent Hill 2, might be involved, but now that it’s been fully revealed, there’s no sign of that being the case.
This will come as a relief to many, though it only adds to the confusion of what they were talking about when they said they were working on a “Nintendo exclusive” codenamed Project M.
The Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club release date is set for August 29, 2024. It is not known how much it will cost, but it will have both a physical and digital release.
While it seems fair to assume that this is Nintendo’s last gaming announcement of the year, you never know with them, especially since it’s still unclear when they’ll reveal their new console and when it might be released.
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